


and on the seventh day

by hongmunmu



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: Akito-centric, Gender Confusion, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Instability, No Romance, Non-Graphic Smut, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 19:29:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9509051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongmunmu/pseuds/hongmunmu
Summary: And so God asked the dragon:





	

“Hello, Hatori-san.”

Hatori didn’t like speaking to Ren Sohma. He didn’t like seeing her, or hearing about her. Something about her felt dark, darker than Akito, darker than Shigure. Seeing a flash of impossibly long hair disappear around a corner or a shadow behind a screen made the hair on the back of his neck stand up; she was like a draught in a warm house.

Interacting with her made him understand Akito a little more.

“Good evening, Ren-san.”

“Hatori-san. Won’t you have tea with me?” Her finger traces the wooden panel of the dividing screen. “It’s so lonely in this part of the house, where that cruel girl keeps me locked away.”

Pitying Akito felt sad. Pitying Ren felt dangerous.

Perhaps it was the bond, but he could feel Akito approaching even as Ren spoke. He felt her harried footsteps through the tatami, falling fast like an animal panicked. Perhaps Akito could sense his discomfort. Perhaps she could smell a rival predator from miles away.

Despite himself, Hatori is glad for her arrival as she appears around the corner and storms the corridor, glad that her possessiveness has saved him further interaction with Ren, and everything that would entail. Akito, for her part, looked sicker than ever; mind and body both. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot as she whirled on her mother, standing protectively in front of Hatori, as if she were a bulwark or a mountain, and not a frail, barefoot little girl.

“How many times to I have to tell you before you understand?! Don’t go near them! Don’t touch them!”

Her hands on Hatori’s coat shook, and he leaned in to reassure her. “Akito, she was just saying hello.” Perhaps it wouldn’t have stayed such, but there was no need to fan the fire and brimstone that burned between mother and daughter.

“That’s right,” Ren murmured, her voice quiet from disuse. “I was only greeting him. Is that truly so terrible?”

“If I were to let you see the male Jyuunishi, you’d seduce them in a heartbeat.” Her words dripped with venom, drawing memory to their last and most catastrophic clash. Shigure’s betrayal was still fresh in Akito’s mind, fresh as the day Ren had taunted her about it. Hatori stared at the tatami as the two women traded barbs, each more hurtful than the last. He was brought back to the conversation as Ren extended a pitying, feminine hand, reaching to brush his face –

Akito forced herself between them, slapping her mother’s hand away before it could touch Hatori, and her shrieks reached a new volume. Hatori could see concerned servants beginning to gather either side of the corridor, keeping a safe distance, yet remaining close enough to overhear what the drama was all about; whispering to each other over their armfuls of folded sheets and kimono.

“I’ll kill you!” Akito screamed, throwing herself at her mother, hands around the taller woman’s throat. Hatori restrains her, pulling her into his chest; all three of them are shouting, and their screams shake the thin paper walls. Despite the clamour, Hatori can feel the silence in the rest of the house. He wonders how many rooms, how many walls it would take, before this violence was out of earshot.

As he pulled his god away from her hated mother, the lingering servants finally stepped in to assist him, gathering around Ren to protect her from Akito’s clawing hands. Hatori arms close around Akito, and he covers her eyes; smothering her. Sheltering her. “Calm down. It’s all right.”

He shifts their position, standing between her and Ren, hiding her behind him so her mother and the gaggle of servants can’t see her cry. Face was a currency in this household. If Hatori saw an opportunity to save some for Akito, he would. God only knew she couldn’t do it on her own.

He orders the servants to escort Ren back to her room, and once they are out of sight and Akito’s temper has subsided into soft weeping, he gathers up her dropped kimono, and then gathers up her. Swathed in his arms.  

Hatori noticed a mole on Akito’s back that he had never noticed before.

 

* * *

 

“Why _not?!_ ” Akito all but shouted, hands gripping his shoulders. She’d never looked less intimidating, half-naked and thinner than ever.

“I’m sorry,” Hatori murmurs, and he does mean it. “Your body wouldn’t be able to handle it, Akito. The risks are too high.”

Akito begins to cry, then, shouting, screaming, clawing at her stomach, clawing at her breasts. Her skin was covered in scratches, long, thin scabs criss-crossing her back and chest. He’d taken measures to try and stop it, ensured her fingernails were always clipped short and insisted Kureno keep an eye on her when she sleeps, but it was never enough. He takes her hands in his own to stop her, and watches her as she ducks her head down and weeps.

She had been given hormone blockers when she was young, long enough to stunt her feminine growth for a while, but eventually Hatori decided the risks were too great. She had been at risk for osteoporosis enough as it was, but with hormone therapy added into the mix, he doubted her body would be able to take it. Her hormone levels had suffered enough – she hardly ever had periods, given how little she ate.

She had cried in his arms much like she was now, the day she had her first spot of blood. Partially because she didn’t understand it, and partially because she didn’t want to.

Perhaps, if Ren had not raised Akito in the way that she did, Akito would have grown up happy with herself, happy with her assigned gender. Perhaps she would have decided that she wished to be a man anyway. They would never know. But from what Hatori had observed in his many years watching over Akito and her health, her dysphoria was not because _she_ believed she was a man, but because the rest of the world did.

Numerous times he had tried to think like her, place himself in her shoes; imagine if he had been raised to be a woman. It had never helped him; the truth of the matter was that his imagination was not vivid enough to empathise with such a unique – and complex – situation. For all his medical qualifications he was utterly stumped by the question of whether or not Akito was transgender. He suspected she was, too.

“I hate it,” she murmurs, head pressing against his shoulder. “I hate being so weak. A weak, worthless, fat-covered _woman._ ” She spat the last word as if it were the worst insult of all.

Hatori had never known if her internalised misogyny came before her dysphoria, or the other way around, but it was equally sad to watch either way. It appeared forced at times; perhaps she believed that if she appeared sexist, people would be less inclined to see her as a woman. Seeing her like this, however, all he could believe was that her self-hate went even deeper than he thought.

Perhaps it was just the doctor in him, but as he held her, blanketed by the lukewarm air in his office, he thought: I hope she heals.

 

* * *

 

“Hurt me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

Akito scoffed, half-hysterical as she always was. Haughty, deluded, caught in the coils of her own paranoia.

“Yes, you do.” She reached up, stroking his blinded eye. “Remember Kana? Remember how I took her from you, Hatori? Remember this?” Her fingers press against his closed eyelid lightly, not outright forceful, but enough to remind one of past violence.

She was trying to wind him up, to force a reaction. That’s what she always did. But Hatori had been tending to Akito since the day she was born, and he knew the best way to hurt her was to not react at all.

His poor, attention-starved God.

“Hatori.”

He doesn’t reply, his thrusts slow, gentle. Everything she doesn’t want.

“I know you hate me. All of you hate me. All of you want me dead, however much you pretend you don’t.”

“I don’t hate you, Akito.”

“Don’t lie to me.” She snorts. “At least Kyo and Hiro don’t hide it.”

She pulls him close, his face to hers, their noses almost touching. “I know you want to hurt me. I can see it in your eyes every time you give me an injection, so don’t bother pretending otherwise. I see it in Shigure’s eyes too, and that woman’s. I know the look of a person who wants me to feel pain.” Her mouth moves towards his ear, her ragged, illness-scented voice a whisper. “So what are you all waiting for?”

He slams her head down against the bed, his hand on her throat, and thrusts into her hard enough to make her gasp. Her look of pain and shock quickly contorts into one of pleasure, and she smirks at him, her lips in that poisonous curve.

“I knew it. I knew-”

“Quiet.”

Two of his fingers force themselves into her mouth, gargling her words; his other hand grips at her bony hips, grasping her hard enough to leave a bruise. Abruptly, then, he pulls out, and turns her over; flipping her like a rag doll, shoving her face into the pillows.

He fucks her to shut her up. He fucks her to claim payment for all the years he’s put up with her. He fucks her because it’s what she wants.

In the end, everything he does is what she wants.

When she wanted love, she went to Kureno. When she wanted hate, she went to Shigure.

When she wanted neither of those things, she went to Hatori.

In the small hours of morning, he knelt at her feet, her hand in his hair.

She said:

“I am a merciful god, and you are indebted to my benevolence.”


End file.
